The Lake Street Safety Center is showcasing its community resources to the public.
Their open house event comes seven months after the hub opened with offerings including a range of crucial services for the neighborhood. Those include K-12 school enrollment assistance, support for crime victims and housing aid.
The center also provides help with substance use disorder recovery, and makes things like overdose medication and fentanyl test strips readily available.
"We have to be able to meet people where they're at, and that means providing overdose medication as well as test strips if people are going to use," says Director of the Minneapolis Neighborhood Safety Department Amanda Harrington. "We want them to do it as safely as possible and we're ready to support them if they're ready to quit."
She added that giving the community a chance to to visit the center will hopefully also educate them on things like filing non-emergency police reports and their new Community Safety Ambassador pilot program.
Harrington says the facility fully up and running and ready to start helping the community.
"People are coming from the light rail and there's a new bus stop out front, we wanted to tell people like, hey we're here," Harrington explains. "I hear from people all the time that still don't know that the center's open and so we wanna come outside the center and let the community members know about the resources that they can access inside."
The Lake Street Safety Center is located at 2228 East Lake Street. The center is open Monday through Friday, five days per week:
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday: 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Tuesday and Thursday: 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
On the first Friday of each month, the safety center will close at 4 p.m.